Numerical Study of Pleated Filter Panels Under Particle Loading Condition

Qisheng Ou (1), Da-Ren Chen (1)

(1) Washington University in St. Louis

     Abstract Number: 680
     Last modified: May 14, 2010

Abstract
Pleated filter panels have been used in a variety of filtration applications in order to reduce the panel pressure drop while processing high gas flowrates. Examples of using pleated filter panels include air filtration in pharmaceutics and semiconductor manufacture cleanrooms, in computer disk-drive micro-environments, and in inlet systems to gas turbines. The performance of pleated filter panels can be influenced by parameters such as the pleat count, pleat height, pleat shape, in addition to the property of flat filter media. Numerical work had been previously conducted to investigate and optimize the initial pressure drop of pleated filter panels. However, the performance optimization of pleated filter panels under the particle loading has been rarely reported.
In this study, a detailed numerical model was developed to investigate the pressure drop of pleated filters under the particle loading (i.e., in depth filtration). In this model, the flow field was calculated by a numerical finite element method using COMSOL Multiphysics; while the particle deposition in/on filter media was computed by particle tracking method, solving the Langevin equation using the Matlab. The change of the pressure drop across the pleated filter media and the flow channel, as well as the evolution of the characteristics of the media can be evaluated as the amount of particles loaded increases. A parametric study was performed to optimize the pleated filter panels in depth filtration regime. The detailed result of this study will be presented in the conference.